Belcher iccte presentation 2012 may 19

E. Christina Belcher
cbelcher@redeemer.ca

ICCTE 10th Biennial Conference
Azusa Pacific University
May 23-26, 2012

The Challenge of Sustaining Faith
and Worldview in Institutional Life

Narrative and worldview: the creative
research imagination in discourse
Creation • My research tells an institutional
story
Fall • My research story struggles with
suffering or disequilibrium
• My research story strives for
Redemption
redemption in its truth telling and
quest for wonder
Reconciliation • My research story reconciles its
narratives within a biblical
perspective of truth, hope and
Reiteration, justice
reflexivity
• My story concludes with reiteration
and and a new embodiment of purpose
embodiment

Session outline:

1. Research purpose: questions and
considerations
2. Context: Exploring the problematic
understanding
3. Worldview: Progression and
language
4. Methodology: Ethnography and
theoretical contours for understanding
5. Findings surrounding praxis and
intent
6. Conclusions

Timeliness of the research
Higher Education policy context (national
and international)

• Interest in ‘shared values’ (Canada and
Abroad)
• Canadian CHE conversations: CAUT,
CARDUS
• Interest in moral agency and institutional
design that fosters community

Institutional context and considerations:
• Worldview – significance and understanding
over time; institutional ‘particularity’
• System and life worlds and narrative voices
within

The challenge of sustaining faith and
worldview in institutional life ...

Research questions
 How does an Institute of Christian Higher
Education (ICHE) develop and articulate an
identity that is distinctive, one that meets
the needs of its particular students and
academics?
 What role does narrative have in
understanding institutional and individual
worldview?
 How is ‘worldview’ as part of institutional life
sustained, discarded or embodied?

The challenge of aligning a faith and
worldview with lived institutional
experience

• Worldview is complex
and varies
institutionally and
communally
• It provides what
Dorothy Smith (2002,
2005) calls a
‘problematic’

Christian Higher Education: Exploring the
worldview ‘problematic’

Outsider Insider
Perspective? Ethnography Perspective?

Language Worldview

Smith, D. E. (2006). Institutional ethnography as practice.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

So how has worldview been understood?
Between 1984-1997:
• As a guiding vision of and
for life (Walsh &
Middleton, 1984) Do not be
conformed
to this
• As something ‘individually’
left largely unquestioned
world, but
(Olthius, 1985) be
transforme
d by the
• As a set of held
renewing of
prepositions or
your mind
assumptions , true or
false, conscious or … (Rom.
subconscious (Sire, 1997) 12:1,2)

Changes in worldview understanding
since 1997:
• As a semiotic system of
narrative signs [creating Do not be
a] symbolic universe … conformed
responsible for life-
to this
determining human
practices. (Naugle,
world, but
2002) be
transforme
d by the
• As a formative,
renewing
embodied liturgical
expression of love of your
(Smith, 2009) mind …
(Rom.

Clearly, the process of seeking to
understand the word ‘worldview’ is
itself problematic due to the many
differing contexts and assumptions
which inform the ways this word is
used by academics, by
individuals and by institutions.

But is worldview more than
any of these ...

A Model for Worldview Analysis (Hiebert,
2008)
-
SYNCHRONIC WORLD -
DIACHRONIC WORLD MYTHS
• worldview, ethos, cosmology, • metanarrative, cosmogony,
metaphors root myths
• synchronic – looks at the structure • diachronic – looks at the
of reality cosmic story

1. Cognitive themes and counter 1. Stories
themes

2. Affective themes and counter 2. Dramatic themes
themes

3. Evaluative themes and counter 3. Progression
themes
•Universalist vs. particularist
•Ascription vs. achievement
•Equality vs. hierarchy This ‘model’
•Individual vs. group
was rejected
4. Root metaphors for a
framework
5. Epistemological foundations

How can worldview be best
understood and sustained within a
‘community’ of Higher Education?

Structure and direction
(Wolters, 1985/2005)

Methodology

Institutional ethnography (Smith, 2005)
• Voices from within, voices from outside, and a
reflexive voice from the liminal spaces
• Interconnections between institutional and
individual identity
• Focus on social experiences and institutional
texts
• Shuttling between focus on the particularities of
institutional academic life and grand narratives,
and the local system/life world structure and
direction
• “Omega College” as a community with an
institutional ‘worldview’

Ethnographic Setting

This research explores
worldview(s), narratives and lived
experience in one Christian
institution of Higher education
across three cohorts of the
institutional community over 35
years.

Institutional Identity, Mission and
conversations ‘over time’ ...
Participants: Students & Data:
professors of the from
academic OC community – email
over a total of 35 years, conversations
from 1970 – 2005.
– demographic
– Cohort 1:1970-1985; data
– Cohort 2: 1985-1997; – focus group
– Cohort 3: 1997-2005. interviews
– Christina, herself

Grand conversations, cultural critique and
‘disequilibrium’ ...
• Disequilibrium (Wolterstorff, 2002) as a
meaningful (if ‘messy’) dimension of
worldview
• Being curious about and ‘lovingly
dissatisfied’ with the existing state of affairs
in a way that engages ‘gracious’
conversation that opens up further dialogue
to rigorous academic scrutiny
• Under such circumstances, ‘worldview’
presents as a complex ‘problematic’ (Smith,
2005) that deserves close scrutiny – by
researchers and by institutions.

Engaging ‘mission’ as one iteration of
worldview
How ‘worldview’ is understood in OC:
two voices from Cohort 1:
Our mission statement suggests spirituality is not a
dimension of life but a pervasive life-direction. Though there
are practices (of worship and devotions, e.g.) that would be
readily recognized as "spiritual", these cultic activities are
only one facet of a life which in all its dimensions--economic,
intellectual, aesthetic, educational, ethical, etc.—is
acknowledged as spiritual, as being in service of the One God
revealed in Jesus Christ or of a substitute for God (an idol).
(Sydney, Cohort 1)

There is much more emphasis now on entering into dialogue
alongside other views (e.g., postmodernism or critical
theory), less on stressing the distinctive content of a
Christian approach [than there was 20 years ago].
(Alex, Cohort 1)

How ‘worldview’ is understood in OC: Two voices
from Cohort 2:

This institution breaks down the false dichotomy of
separating faith and life; and makes faith significant to
life in ways which benefit the world at large.
(Karol, Cohort 2)

I can select experiences in [OC] that shaped my
worldview which developed as much from ordinary
experiences (personal shared stories and narratives) as
out of philosophical or theoretical reflection. This
showed me the importance of life experiences in
shaping my worldview beyond theory.
(Jade, Cohort 2)

How ‘worldview’ is understood in OC :Two voices
from Cohort 3:

[OC works at preparing a] thoughtful and critical life-long
learner who is always looking for fresh ways to seek justice,
transform culture, obtain the common good. (Geri, Cohort 3)
I think it is necessary to reflect more about the unique,
historically constituted way in which students’ experiences and
agency play into the way students themselves appropriate and
utilise the variety of things an institute like [OC] has to offer.
One impression I recall is how different [OC] was from year to
year... During the summer [I was] re-hooking up with students
and staff I had been taught by or studied with. 12 years later,
the same common bonds of solidarity, intellectual struggle and
faith/life integration featured in our conversations and
characterised our shared activities. [OC] sharpened my
intellectual skills and confirmed that it is legitimate to pursue
academic interests that serve the needs of the marginalised and
excluded in society. (Lee, Cohort 3)

How ‘worldview’ is understood in OC:
one voice over three
generations

I have experienced the hard reality that
commonness of worldview may, nevertheless,
lead to diverging practices.

OC accurately reflects and embodies its vision
statement even though it is beset with all the
foibles and frailties of human institutions.
Yes, even as I have done my part in shaping
the institutional worldview, experiences at
[OC] have shaped me.
(Taylor, Cohorts 1, 2 & 3)

Some insights from interviews and analysis
• ‘Disequilibrium’ can be a helpful notion in making
meaning from the diverse data. It has helped to
reveal tensions in institutional perspectives on its
worldview which otherwise may have remained
invisible or even corrosive to ongoing institutional life
• Reflection ‘over time’ as well as in the moment
provides a lens into the function and nature of
worldview in institutional life
• Institutional worldview: common narratives, but also
diversity and tensions (not a prescription for life)
– “a dynamic lived experience rather than an abstract set
of bounded concepts that govern individuals and the
collective of a whole institution over generations”
(Belcher & Parr, 2011)

Final words from the inside over time, within
system /life world structure and direction …
I think that OC has made me far more self-
conscious about the ways in which my own work is
tied to the orienting intuitions, convictions [and]
sensibility I bring to that work. It has made me far
more self-conscious about looking at the work of
others out of the expectation that their work too
flows from equally deep impulses. And it has
helped me thereby to come to both my own work
and the work of others with a critical sympathy, at
one and the same time convinced that we tend to
see it in partial and [even] in distorted ways.
(MacKenzie, Cohort 3)

Some insights from interviews &
analysis
• ‘Disequilibrium’ has been a helpful notion in
making meaning from the diverse data. It has
helped to reveal tensions in institutional
perspectives on its worldview which otherwise
may have remained invisible or even corrosive
to ongoing institutional life
• Reflection ‘over time’ as well as in the
moment provides a lens into the function and
reality of worldview in institutional life
• ‘Grand conversations’ in community result in
hybrid worldviews which eventually
strengthen or alter original worldview states
within institutions

Institutional Mission And
Worldview Perceptions

Systemworld Lifeworld

Participant Narratives • Relational
•Structure •Philosophical
•Governance •Epistemological
•Policies Disequilibrium •Metaphorical
•Strategies •for engaging conflict •Themes of cultural
•Economics and culture engagement

Worldview Practices
Disequilibrium over time generates new narratives, perceptions
and practices, promoting transformation or conformation
into intentional practices.

Figure 5.6: The Analysis of Intentional Worldview Practices

The Challenge of Sustaining Faith and
Worldview in Institutional Life
Conclusions:
• Worldview must be engaged and made
meaningful to endure/become embodied.
• Worldview must be embodied in ways that
provoke wonder, truth, justice and
reconciliation in community life beyond the
institutional walls to engage faith.
• Worldview is sustained by narrative
expression and intentional practice and
presence in institutional contexts
• Worldviews become hybrid and change as
culture changes, becoming ‘a mirror or a
compass’ to society.

For future research:
• Does this resultant framework assist
other institutions in assessing their
worldview?
• Does the life-world and system-world
balance/imbalance in an institution
inhibit or liberate positive worldview
embodiment, in what ways, and to
what end?

Belcher iccte presentation 2012 may 19

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